Chapter Five Released

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, picking up as promised, in the last 15 minutes or so of my lunch hour...
Morganni said:

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And on thinking about it some more... Well, I've only had one relatively cursory read through the IN rules, but it seems like "servitor" in this story is pretty much equivalent to "soldier" in the game. With "soldier" in the story being something with no direct counterpart. Or at least it didn't sound to me like soldiers in IN lost their free will to the degree that everyone is so upset about.

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Yes, I think I've said it elsewhere, but Chris and I have been playing fast-and-loose with the In Nom rules on this point. We had both independently (as I recall) come up with the same basic idea that there had to be more "ranks" than just Soldier -- plus we wanted to work Megumi's mad-on for Mara into this. So we postulated a "gofer" type servant who normally didn't get empowered for direct combat. Megumi got sworn in as one of these -- and got a Force anyway. Note that it wasn't Skuld who took the oath, but the Maiden, the metalevel being who "plays" Skuld in this universe. The Maiden then did something unexpected.

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while at work tonight I was seized by an irrational desire to refer to... whatever that thing is Doug's using... as the "thwack'em stick". (It's too effective to be the "stick of pain".) ... hopefully it'll get a real name at some point

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Oh, it will. It in fact has two names in my notes, both given to it by Doug. It has no name right now, except perhaps for an index/catalogue number.
Shepherd said:

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While I admit that I'm not familiar with In Nomine game mechanics, if Megumi could sense Mara's discordant part of the local symphony then shouldn't Mara, who is orders of magnitude more powerful than Megumi, have also heard a mortal servant of a goddess in her immediate vicinity?

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Timote and Logan have the right of this -- Megumi is minor, little more than an ordinary human in the cosmic scheme of things, and fits into the "background". If Mara were actively looking for Heavenly agents, she'd eventually be able to pick Megumi out, but she's not -- she's too busy indulging in sadism to consider that there might be a heavenly agent present who was never there before. And as a Demon First Class, Mara's personal symphony is like an air horn going off during a string quartet -- you can't miss it, if you can hear the Symphony at all.

-- Bob
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